Hinch: Youth increasingly seeking new salvation

Dec. 12, 2012

Updated Aug. 21, 2013 1:17 p.m.

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Ben and Aimee Price pray and take communion with son Ezekiel in front of a portable wooden cross during services at Epic Church in Fullerton. "Not many of my friends I grew up (with) stayed with the church,” said Aimee Price, a 27-year-old Placentia preschool teacher whose parents were missionaries based at Calvary Church in Santa Ana. PAUL BERSEBACH, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Dorene Doi and Kristine Chong discuss pastor Kevin Doi's message during services at Epic Church in Fullerton. The pastor makes time for such discussions during his sermon. PAUL BERSEBACH, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Members of Epic Church in Fullerton pray and take communion in front of a portable wooden cross during services on Sunday. Epic Church uses the multi-purpose room at Wilshire Avenue Church for their Sunday services. PAUL BERSEBACH, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Pastor Kevin Doi gives his message during services at Epic Church in Fullerton on Sunday. PAUL BERSEBACH, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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A member of Epic Church in Fullerton takes communion during services on Sunday. Epic Church uses the multi-purpose room at Wilshire Avenue Church for its Sunday services. PAUL BERSEBACH, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Ben and Aimee Price pray and take communion with son Ezekiel in front of a portable wooden cross during services at Epic Church in Fullerton. "Not many of my friends I grew up (with) stayed with the church,” said Aimee Price, a 27-year-old Placentia preschool teacher whose parents were missionaries based at Calvary Church in Santa Ana. PAUL BERSEBACH, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

As sanctuaries fill up for the holidays, forward-thinking church leaders are finding little to celebrate in a growing body of research that shows American Christianity at risk of losing an entire generation of young people, perhaps for good.

A record one-third of Americans under age 30 are now religiously unaffiliated, according to a recent study by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. That's up from one-quarter just four years ago. There are now more religiously unaffiliated Americans than white evangelical Protestants.

Only 16 percent of non-Christian young people under 30 say they have a "good impression" of Christianity, and a mere 3 percent feel that way about evangelical Christianity, according to the Barna Group, a Christian market research organization. As recently as the 1990s a majority of non-Christians viewed Christianity favorably.

More potentially troubling to church leaders is even half of young Christians have negative views of their own faith, according to Barna. Fifty percent describe Christianity as judgmental, hypocritical and too political. A third say their faith is "out of touch with reality."

"It's the melting of the icebergs but many people aren't paying attention to it," said David Kinnaman, president of the Barna Group.

Last year Kinnaman wrote a book titled "You Lost Me" about young people leaving the church.

They left, Kinnaman found, not because of difficult church teachings or the lure of secular culture. Instead, young people described their churches as fear-based, risk-averse, isolated, shallow, antagonistic to science, simplistic and judgmental about sexuality, and inhospitable to questions or doubt.

One of young people's most common complaints: "Christianity in today's society no longer looks like Jesus."

"Not many of my friends I grew up (with) stayed with the church," said Aimee Price, a 27-year-old Placentia preschool teacher whose parents were missionaries based at Calvary Church in Santa Ana.

Price said her older brother left the church after high school and never looked back. "There was this sense of betrayal," she recalled, after Christian youth leaders at school criticized her brother for going to alcohol-fueled parties they themselves attended. "My brother didn't like them being two-faced."

Price said she remained a Christian only because she found a fellowship of Christian athletes during high school and then a college group focused on social justice initiatives.

"Our priorities are different this generation," she said. "It's just very action-oriented."

Brian Rottschafer, a pastor at RockHarbor church in Costa Mesa, said church leaders no longer can base their ministry solely on moral exhortation. RockHarbor, founded in 1997 as an offshoot of Mariners Church in Irvine, now draws 1,400 college-age worshippers to two back-to-back Sunday evening services.

"As megachurches have risen up ... there tended to be an emphasis on being moral, the Ten Commandments, don't sin," Rottschafer said.

"While I think that's important, this generation looks at it and says, 'Yeah, but Jesus also talks about loving widows and orphans, and if you obey me you'll love as I love.' ... A lot of (young people) have not seen the church love their neighbor as themselves."

Rottschafer said some worshippers at RockHarbor "call themselves followers of Jesus, not necessarily Christians, because it's been branded in a certain way." Members, he said, gravitate not only to evangelization but also to issues such as microfinance startups in developing countries or ending sexual trafficking.

"Some of the sexual sins ... with this generation, that is not a big deal," Rottschafer said, especially when young people encounter studies showing that nearly 40 percent of weekly churchgoers have been divorced or separated.

"You Left Me" author Kinnaman, of the Barna Group, said he delivers up to 75 talks each year at conferences, workshops and churches. Sometimes his research prompts "unmitigated concern." Sometimes there's a backlash.

At a workshop in Texas a few weeks ago Kinnaman recommended to an audience of 150 church leaders that they engage technology-obsessed young people by inviting them to "create a video history of the congregation." The suggestion, Kinnaman said, wasn't well received, with one audience member shouting "That's a terrible idea."

"They felt like it was too worldly," he said.

Kinnaman and Rottschafer both noted that young churchgoers can be influenced by a variety of secular forces – powerful technology, omnipresent media, a culturally diverse population, low-cost travel – and that churches can no longer expect to receive admiration or even attention from those would-be members without earning their respect.

Churches, Kinnaman said, must create an environment that speaks "to the reality of faith in a complex world." In his view, that means abandoning hostility to science, tackling controversial social debates with full and nuanced biblical understanding and embracing the technology that young people now regard as a fixture of life.

Meg Munoz, founder of a Fullerton-based nonprofit providing social services to women in Orange County's adult entertainment industry, was, until recently, a living illustration of Kinnaman's research.

Munoz, who turned 40 this year, grew up attending a small Lutheran church in Cerritos where, in her view, "there didn't seem to be any sincerity."

She dropped out of church at age 10, floundered as a teenager and wound up working as a sexual escort for five years. After extricating herself from the sex industry she met a man, married and decided to try church again.

Munoz and her husband, Tony, ended up at First Evangelical Free Church in Fullerton, a 57-year-old megachurch that has launched the careers of such evangelical luminaries as Chuck Swindoll.

First EV Free, as the church calls itself, offers a typical megachurch array of specialty groups for children , teens, young couples, families and divorced and single parents.

What the church did not offer, in Munoz's opinion, was authentic relationships or a model of service to the community.

Munoz and her husband joined a small group of young couples that scheduled regular "playdates" for themselves and occasionally undertook local service projects.

"If we're only doing it to make ourselves feel better then we have a problem," Munoz said. "But if we change our lives into a life of service, that's beautiful."

When Munoz broached the idea of her nonprofit to church leaders, she said they became uncomfortable because she aimed only to help women in the sex industry, not convert them.

In 2009 she and Tony left EV Free, and might have left church altogether except that a friend told them about a small church in downtown Fullerton called Epic, which encourages members to form deep relationships with one another and to serve surrounding low-income neighborhoods. At Epic, homeless people from a nearby shelter often attend Sunday services alongside a congregation of 140 that is roughly 60 percent Asian, the rest white, Hispanic and black. Aimee Price, the Placentia preschool teacher, also attends Epic, along with her husband, Ben, and their months-old son, Ezekiel.

"When we left EV Free, I was just really wounded and really disheartened with the church in general," Munoz said.

At Epic, she said the emphasis is on Christian action, not just Christian conversion. "They're like, 'OK, what do you need to serve and care for other people?' ... That's huge for us."

Jon Nitta, pastor to young adults at First EV Free, acknowledged that an older style of church ministry – which he summarized as "life is good and this is how it can get better" – no longer works for young adults craving what he describes as a more authentic faith.

First EV Free recently hired a new senior pastor, Mike Erre, who previously taught at RockHarbor. Under Erre, Nitta said, the church has begun emphasizing the importance of serving the community not "from a sense of obligation, but rather from out of the heart of their faith."

Though Nitta described First EV Free as "an aging congregation," he said this past year the young adults' group grew from a dozen attendees to 100. Total adult attendance at last Sunday's services was roughly 4,100.

This Christmas the young adults' group plans to hold a small worship service on Dec. 23 then drive to a home for abused teens, where church members will cook breakfast for the teens. Rather than proselytize verbally, the group aims to demonstrate faith "through our works and character," Nitta said.

"All of us are trying to figure this thing out," Nitta said of the rapidly changing landscape of church ministry.

"It's like the culture is changing so quickly we feel ourselves responding to it rather than leading ... God is always at work and we jump in with what he's doing."

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